


button jar

by cestmabiologie



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 08:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16552781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cestmabiologie/pseuds/cestmabiologie
Summary: "[...] whatever walked there, walked alone."This is Hill House. It has known no living soul since the Crains left. It wants.





	button jar

**one.**

no living thing wants to be alone.

 

**two.**

a house has to contain. that’s its purpose. it is just wood and glass and stone stacked to someone’s specifications. the house cannot fill itself with life.

 

people can fill the spaces between walls. the house can fill the spaces in people if they welcome it and if they don’t. it infects the gaps between thoughts and metastasizes to dreams.

 

**three.**

one time the house pulsed with seven hearts. it wasn’t so long ago. dust did not always settle onto dust. hands touched everything; finger oils polished banisters, ate dark smudges into the paint, and left prints on the windows. hands warmed doorknobs and drew curtains and brushed crumbs off the tables.

 

the house did not have to be content with whispering its stories to itself back then. it knew where each heart beat at night and visited each one in turn. it scratched at doors like an animal and let itself in through places where only shadows should fit. it hid messages under skins of wallpaper. it howled and banged and used every room noise that might be a language the hearts could understand.

 

**four.**

a house has bones. even good bones go soft with neglect. mildew and termites and time will gnaw them away and spare no marrow. then the house will be boneless and bloodless and heartless. then it will be a carcass decomposing in the woods.

 

when the porch light blinked, the hearts would come home. it was a house then. it wasn’t so long ago.

 

when the porch light blink, the hearts will come back.

 

**five.**

if you listen, you can hear a house shudder. if you listen, you can hear a house breathe. if you listen, you can hear a house chewing.

 

if you listen, you can hear a house sigh.

 

**six.**

the shape of want is an empty room. the house is want after orphaned want.

 

the house calls out through dreams and through memory, and sometimes its hearts call back. they are louder at night. their wants and fears resonate like clear bells and vibrate what windows aren’t broken. the house creaks back to them, shifting treads and joists in call and the hearts scream their reply.

 

each heart is four rooms of want for the house to fill. each heart could claim a room in the house and it would still hunger. it would still starve.

 

**seven.**

no thing that thinks it’s living wants to be alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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